American
scholar Ivan P. Hall is widely considered a leading expert on Japan—and
one of the most controversial.

Dr. Hall has been a journalist, a diplomat promoting U.S.-Japan
cultural ties, an author on Mori Arinori and a lecturer at Gakushuin
University. In his 1998 book Cartels of the Mind, Dr. Hall
excoriated Japan for its exclusion of foreign ideas. In 2002, he
published Bamboozled: How America Loses the Intellectual Game
with Japan and its Implications for Our Future in Asia (M.E.
Sharpe). He argues that Tokyo has manipulated and intimidated a
naive and fearful America into believing pro-Japanese propaganda
ensuring Tokyo’s dominance in trade, use of the security treaty
to defend its economic sphere and social exclusion.

Dr. Hall received a B.A. in European History from Princeton University,
an M.A. in International Relations from the Fletcher School and
a Ph.D. in Japanese History from Harvard University. He is fluent
in Japanese, German and French.

He gave this exclusive interview to Victor Fic, a guest interviewer
at JapanReview.Net.

Interview:
January 26, 2002

What was your initial attraction to Japan?It was both personal and professional. After World War II, Northeast
Asia was fascinating because its cultures were highly developed
or even more sophisticated than Western ones, yet utterly different
linguistically, religiously and philosophically. In India and most
of the former colonies, the familiar overlay of Anglicization or
Europeanization was thicker. Japan was also an interesting intellectual
foil for comparisons with postwar Germany, which I knew well, and
China was inaccessible. Also, I found East Asians interesting and
companionable.

What kind of training do you have?To start, a doctorate from Harvard in Japanese History, focusing
on modern intellectual issues, backed by an MA in International
Relations from the Fletcher School and a BA in European History
from Princeton. I have fluency in Japanese, German and French, enough
to have negotiated cultural agreements with Japan when I worked
under Edwin O. Reischauer, the pioneer of Japan studies in America
and the architect of the so-called "special relationship" with Tokyo.
I have given lecture courses and upper-division seminars at Japanese
universities, and appeared on Japanese television, all in Japanese.

What does "bamboozlement" mean? It is the central concept in my book, and so I develop it at
length. Basically, it refers to Japan promoting its preferred self-image
to Americans, and Americans believing it. It starts with active
bamboozlement by Tokyo, but occurs as much through our own self-deception,
and so my book is much tougher on the Americans. The next step is
co-bamboozlement by Americans collaborating in maintaining those
positive images. When this happens long enough, auto-bamboozlement,
or reinforcement of the delusion by the deluded themselves, ensues
thanks to our own intellectual proclivities and liberal nostrums.

Why did a Harvard scholar use such a facetious or offhand term
as "bamboozlement" to describe Japan's alleged propaganda offensive
and America's complicity?"Bamboozled" is a delightful 19th century, Mark Twain-like term
that puts the onus for the deception on the party being deceived
for being so gullible. Also, it is funny, and so fits the silliness
of the intellectual game Tokyo plays.

Reischauer was famous for predicting in the 60's that closed
Japan would converge with open America, and until he died in 1990,
he was optimistic in public. Do you recall him voicing any doubts
in private? I have no knowledge of any off the record statement by him doubting
Japan's convergence. My purely personal impression was that by the
mid-1970s, Ed was increasingly disappointed by the pace at which
Japan was opening up to the rest of the world.

That brings us to today's Japan. What are its essential features
in public policy?Japan's trade policy will remain mercantilist. The New Old Right,
as I call them, will push for a stronger defense, perhaps even nuclear
weapons, and the abolition of Article 9. Americans will largely
support this, being too narrowly focused on greater military cooperation,
while remaining ignorant of the gradual erosion of postwar liberal
values in Japan. Educational exchanges from America to Japan will
remain very superficial, with no dramatic opening of the Japanese
academy to either the Western or Asian world. Anti-discrimination
suits will continue both in Japan and abroad. Be prepared for more
of the same—lots of it—to put it colloquially. No Third
Great Opening of Japan.

You are the only analyst to highlight how deconstructionism supposedly
leads to bamboozlement.
I mention this as one of the recent intellectual fads found in American
academe, as opposed to the general public's thinking. Along with
rational choice theory, they have deflected the energy, attention,
and perceptions of America's coming generation of Japan scholars
away from a genuine mastery of Japanese language, history, and culture
- area studies - toward more epiphenomenal theoretical concerns.
Even scholars, let alone graduate students, have only so many hours
for study per day. Better to get into the substance of Japanese
literature, for example, first and mine the wealth of insights it
provides into Japanese values, emotions, psychology, and social
arrangements, rather than fritter away time on the application of
Western theoretical frameworks. Those have their place, but only
at a very advanced stage.

What happened with Sophia University?
While I was still in Hawaii, I accepted an invitation to speak about
my book at the Ichigaya campus of Sophia University, agreeing to
a date that would fit both my busy Japan schedule and the crowded
Bonenkai season at Sophia. The American dean of the Faculty of Comparative
Culture at Ichigaya then persuaded the Japanese director of the
Institute of Comparative Culture to withdraw his sponsorship of
my talk, in effect canceling the invitation, on the grounds that
the title of my talk ("Why Do Americans Not Understand Japan?")
was, of all things, "racist." As part of this Orwellian exercise
in political correctness, I was never contacted for a possible change
in title. The point of this caper, obviously, was to keep me out
altogether. I wrote to the university president asking him to look
into this egregious violation of academic freedom at the Ichigaya
campus, but I never got a reply. Perhaps, in retrospect, it was
all a blessing in disguise. The incident, covered by the press,
became the laughing stock of Tokyo, and doubtless helped sell a
lot more books. No, I did not plan it that way from the start!

Critics say that you come across as a disgruntled "gaijin" because
of bad professional experiences like your lawsuit against Gakushuin. The "disgruntled gaijin" ploy is a red herring, typical of
the ad hominem charges that skeptical analysts of things Japanese
are subjected to when their critics can't handle the substantive
argument. My analysis of the closed nature of Japanese academe goes
back to March 1986 in Gendai no Koto Kyoiku, and July 1987
in the Wall Street Journal, long before my time at the Gakushuin
University in the early 1990s, or the foreign teachers' protest
at mid-decade. So this question has the cart before the horse. The
charge that a critic writes because he or she is angry is a certified
Japanese defensive stratagem. Actually, whether angry or not, it
doesn't change the rightness or wrongness of the argument. The charge
is essentially irrelevant, and the question itself suggests that
the questioner, without contrary proof or argumentation, simply
assumes there is nothing to be angry about.

But you seemed to defend so-called dead wood scholars and active
ones alike. This sounds like pot shots from the peanut gallery. I'd like
to know who the foreign scholars were who denigrated other foreign
scholars as being "deadwood." People should name names in both cases.
In Cartels of the Mind (1997) I focused on foreign scholars
who had been fired at national universities, especially the new
"internationalized" campus at Tsukuba, who held doctorates in their
respective disciplines, were widely published, and I'll wager would
put their anonymous foreign detractors in the scholarly shade. Look
among the large numbers of Japanese faculty, tenured from the day
of their appointment, if you are collecting deadwood, or insist
that permanent staffers should not exploit easy working conditions.

The problem here is the system, politically dictated and consciously
maintained by the Japanese; personal pique should not shift the
focus. Rather, the professional commitment and courage of those
foreign scholars who had the guts to protest is what should be applauded.

On the economic front, what led you to the conclusion that Tokyo
is scheming to carve a closed economic glacis in East Asia? Japan
refused to support the East Asian Economic Caucus because it knew
America opposes it as a trade block.I emphasize the vigorous personal networking, the ongoing regional
integration, and the extent of Asia's economic and technological
dependence on Japan as propounded by recent scholarship. Of course,
Tokyo would not be so foolish as to squander its political and strategic
capital with the U.S. to make a largely symbolic statement in promoting
the EAEC when so much cooperation already is going on at the practical
level. The phrase "Japan still plans to carve out" sounds too deliberate
and conspiratorial—if not outdated—since much of it
already has been done. The Japanese are only doing what makes economic
sense to them, and their ends and means are not our own ideologues'
formula for an increasingly open and globalizing economy along American
lines.

The Asian Wall Street Journal panned your book, accusing
you of non-scholarly methodology when you said that many Japanese
called City Hall to defend Mayor Shintaro Ishihara after he called
Asians "sankokujin." Reviewer Michael Alan Hamlin noted just because
extremists voice support, they do not dominate.Hamlin is ignorant about Japan. The evidence is seen in the
dates he gave for the great Kanto earthquake—1937 when it
should have been 1923—and for the recent Kobe earthquake of
2000 when we all know it was 1995. That's like asserting the London
blitz was 1954, not 1940, or having the Berlin Wall coming down
in 1994! As for whoever called in to City Hall when Gov. Ishihara's
used "sankokujin," it was not just the high proportion who approved,
but more importantly, the low proportion who disapproved, that was
alarming. If the moderates are indeed numerous, why didn't more
of them call in to be counted when they heard Ishihara's provocation?
The real point here is that Ishihara had the temerity to say the
slur, indicating a permissiveness that shows how Japan's political
ground has shifted to the right. One cannot imagine earlier governors
of Tokyo even thinking about making such a crude xenophobic remark.
It is as if Mayor Bloomberg of New York had publicly uttered the
term, "Japs" knowing that the social climate considered it safe.

Many observers insist that Ishihara draws the protest vote from
Japanese fed up with the system - ironically, he indicates a desire
for reform.Ishihara best articulates, and most openly espouses, the ideological
nostrums of Japan's renascent right. In earlier decades the communists
often drew a protest vote, too, but that fact that non-communists
voted for them did not change the nature or ideological commitments
of the Japan Communist Party. The main difference now is that today's
forces on the Japanese right are in a far better position to drag
Japan's center in their direction -- as happened before World War
II. The JCP never had the same power to swing society radically.

You recount the story of Dr. David McNeill, an Irish research
scholar at Tokyo University who also runs a Japanese-language radio
program with his Japanese wife, Keiko, on FM Sagamihara. Japanese
right-wing protestors took umbrage with their on-air comments about
the Nanking Massacre, raising issues about media intimidation in
Japan. You state “McNeill settled the uproar with a ‘deep apology’
for having insulted the right-wingers.”

According to McNeill, he and his wife never apologized. Why the
discrepancy? Do you think the McNeills’s stated refused to apologize
weakens your argument that “dissenters” are truly banished from
the debate? I think from what David told me when I ran my initial draft
paragraph past him on the phone was that he had apologized to the
right wing group who was angry because he lumped them together in
the same breath with the yakuza. Also, he did so to protect his
Japanese station owner or manager from further harassment and possible
physical damages to premises. This was an entirely understandable
tactical apology to save his Japanese friends more trouble. Whether
the McNeills apologized or not, the right wing does go after people
whose views they don't like, at times to the point of threatening
of actually committing violence. This doesn't banish dissent in
Japan, it just makes it harder.

Why do you insist that the Japanese economy is not in danger? The Japanese economy has its problems including lack of entrepreneurial
spirit and a huge debt crisis, but it is not collapsing. There's
a world of difference between the two, but the more precarious the
image, the more convenient for fending off market opening pressures.

You argue that Japan is still intent on creating an economic
sphere in East Asia. How can Tokyo defend itself?By the Security Treaty with the U.S., the best geo-strategic
deal the Japanese ever made, far outpacing the Anglo-Japanese alliance
of 1902-1922. It also saves Tokyo lots of money, husbands precious
political capital in Japan's immediate region, and assures access
to the world's largest market. As such, it gives the U.S. more leverage,
say in market-opening issues, than we have been willing to acknowledge.
We are too easily frightened by the bogey, variously orchestrated
by Tokyo, of anti-Americanism that would threaten our bases in Japan.

At the start of the book, you warn that America's poor understanding
of Japan could portend a similar failure to grasp non-Western societies,
as in the mid-east. How so?
I put in three years' service with the U.S.I.S. in Afghanistan and
Pakistan some forty years ago, so recent events have jogged old
memories. In the Islamic world, as toward Japan, we have scraped
along for decades giving minimum intellectual attention to the region:
the same sort of broad public ignorance, the same on-and-off media
attention, the same support for reactionary regimes as long as they
remain pro-American, and the same conflating of important cultural
differences - Arab versus Iranian, Chinese versus Japanese - within
regions. And above all, there is the same risk of the assumption
that American values and ways of doing things will take root if
only given a foothold - Don Rumsfeld as the Macarthur of Iraq.

What are the best and worst books on Japan?Two of the books I most admire on Japan are William J. Holstein's
The Japanese Power Game: What It Means for America (1991)
and Laurie Freeman's Closing the Shop (2000). On the negative
side of the ledger, Milton Ezrati's Kawari: How Japan’s Economic
and Cultural Transformation Will Alter the Balance of Power Among
Nations. (2000).

Victor
Fic is a Canadian freelance writer and broadcaster specializing
on Japan and W.W. II, and U.S.- East Asian diplomatic affairs.
He lived in Japan between 1991 and 1995, and now broadcasts for
C.B.S. News Radio, the Media Corporation of Singapore and others
in Seoul. He has published in some 35 newspapers and journals
worldwide.